


Love Disappointed

by Laguera25



Series: What Dreams May Come [2]
Category: Almost Human
Genre: Canon Disabled Character, Gen, Male-Female Friendship, Physical Disability, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-01
Updated: 2015-01-01
Packaged: 2018-03-04 19:37:26
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 11,293
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3085922
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Laguera25/pseuds/Laguera25
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Samantha Peavy has known John Kennex since she was ten years old, and when she was twelve years old, he saved her life with the plunge of an epi-pen.  Twenty-six years later, she's a successful Fed, and he's a battered patchwork detective held together by piss and vinegar.  Time has changed them both, but it never broke their bond, so when he turns up on her doorstep with a broken heart, she opens the door and lets him in.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Love Disappointed

**Author's Note:**

> Written for Lilithnox, who wanted a BFF for John. Samantha Peavy is her creation, and I am just playing with her.
> 
> This is in the same 'verse as my previous fic, When Fractured Stars Align, but knowledge of it is not required.

"I've lost my Rhea," he says when she opens the door, and wobbles precariously on his synthetic leg.

"John?" She should be angry at him, the stupid, lying son of a bitch, should want to wring his neck and kick him in the ass as hard as she'd punched him in the face when she'd walked into a precinct conference room and found him at the table, alive and well and offering her a chummy, hopeful grin, but all she feels is unease and burgeoning sorrow. There's no trace of bravado in him now, only hunched shoulders and wet, raw eyes and a bruise on his right cheek that promises to darken and throb for days.

The bruise is from her, and the bastard deserved every bit of it, sitting in that chair and grinning like a fool while her broken heart spasmed and stuttered inside her chest and her mind began to spin at the impossibility of it. But the rest...

She stands aside to grant him entry, and he dips his head and limps inside. 

_Synthetic integration failed,_ drones the voice of his prosthetic monitoring system, and there's an ominous creak as the coupling threatens to buckle.

He unholsters his service weapon and sets it on the side table in her small vestibule, and then he slips off his jacket and tosses it over the back of the sofa.

 _Synthetic integration failed,_ the voice brays from beneath his pant leg, but John ignores it and shuffles to the couch. He collapses onto the cushions with a graceless flop and buries his head in his hands.

"Well, hello to you, too," she says drily, but there's no bite to it.

 _That's because there's nothing left to chew,_ says a dismal voice inside her head. _Whatever happened after you left him on his ass on the conference room floor stripped him to the bone and unzipped his guts while it was at it. You try to tear into him now, you'll hit nothing but exposed nerve._

She leaves him long enough to grab a beer from the refrigerator and pour him a scotch, neat, and then she returns to the living room. "Here," she says, and thrusts the scotch at him.

He takes the scotch without looking at her, and unease balloons into dread when the ice chatters against the glass.

She betrays nothing as she settles herself into the loveseat opposite him, but her stomach clenches beneath her FBI t-shirt. She opens her beer with a practiced twist of her wrist and takes a fortifying pull. "What happened?"

He says nothing for a long time. He merely sits, hunched in on himself, elbows propped on his knees and tumbler of scotch dangling between his fingers. He raises it halfway to his mouth, then lowers it again. A sardonic huff, and he shakes his head.

"I knew," he says, and Christ, it's a strangled croak, laryngeal and dry, as though all the spittle has been leached from his mouth. "I knew what it was going to do when I left her that morning. I put it off as long as I could. I let her make me toast and pour me a second cup of coffee. I double-checked my shave job in the bathroom mirror. I kept finding reasons to stay because I knew what would happen when I walked out that door. I didn't want to hurt her. She'd never done anything to deserve-" His mouth works, and he takes a deep, shuddering breath. "Christ, she was pregnant, and I just-" The chatter of ice in his glass is a constant, fretful tinkle. He leans forward and sets the untouched tumbler on the coffee table.

"John-"

"I don't know how long I sat in that fucking parking garage. I couldn't make myself drive away. Dorian had to do it because my hands just wouldn't-" He clenches his hands into tight, trembling, bloodless fists.

She watches his jittering hands in silence.

_The last time you saw those hands tremble was when he raised Rhea's veil on their wedding day. He was so proud and so nervous and so afraid of getting it wrong, of tearing that delicate lace. They were still trembling when he cradled her face in them and bent to kiss her, a gentle thrum in his fingertips that made that baby's breath woven into Rhea's golden hair shiver in sympathy. You've never forgotten it because John's hands as steady are bedrock. Those hands can pump twelve rounds into center mass in seconds, and when you were twelve years old, those hands plunged an epi pen into your thigh and saved your life. Those hands--John--are solid as they come, and yet there he was, the unflappable John Kennex, shaking like a schoolboy as he swept his bride into his arms._

_You'd've ribbed him about it if you didn't understand why. He never talked about it much; as his frustrated therapists have discovered, he's not one for baring his soul, but John believed in happily ever after. He always thought he would marry and settle down into a life with a house and a white picket fence and a yard full of kids. Why shouldn't he? He was young and handsome and sweet behind his blustering, cocky facade. It was no great stretch to imagine that those hazel eyes and sharp cheekbones would catch the eye of some pretty young thing and entice her to take his name and set up house and fill the nursery with babies._

_But the job is a demanding taskmaster, a devourer of time and energy and attention, and John was driven, a child of the badge determined to do his father proud. He trained endlessly and worked long, unforgiving hours, first as a beat cop walking himself footsore through Chinatown and later as a brash, young detective with a legacy on his shoulder and a single-minded determination to prove himself worthy of the detective's shield he'd earned at just twenty-nine. Plenty of women were drawn in by his looks and his swagger and his boyish charms, but none could withstand the unrelenting grind of the job--the canceled dates and missed dinners and anniversaries that were celebrated belatedly or not at all; the nights alone and abbreviated or aborted vacations and romantic getaways that never materialized. A few were unreasonable harridans who clung and demanded and rubbed his nose in his shortcomings, but most simply wearied of being left alone or behind in the name of a job that spared not a single damn for them. One by one, they succumbed to the inexorable, inevitable end, and John was left to start again, a little sadder and a little wiser but still held in thrall by the job he'd loved since he was old enough to play cop and perp with his father's badge._

_He was thirty-eight years old when Anna Moore waltzed into his life, and for a while, you thought that he might've found his happy ending. John was certainly moon-eyed over her, giddy and gushing and hanging off her every word. Three dates in, and he was talking of love and fate and finding the one, and eight weeks after she popped her head into his cruiser as he sat at a red light, he moved her into his apartment._

_It was too much too fast, but he wouldn't hear a word against it. Anna was beautiful and eager and soft-spoken, and he was keenly aware that of the passage of time. He wasn't slowing down yet, was still strong and vital and whole and could sprint down the street like a gazelle in pursuit of a suspect, but he was no longer the cocky, young kid with nothing but time. The wife and children and cozy suburban life he thought he'd have by now was nowhere to be found, and his apartment was full of light and not much else. Though he'd never admit it, John was lonely, and Anna was his chance to leave behind more than a flawless record and a boxful of useless medals and framed commendations._

_So you bit your tongue and let him have his giddy daydream, but deep in your heart, it unsettled you. John was a romantic at heart, and no one who'd seen him on the job would call him a paragon of prudence and forethought, but he'd always been content to let his amorous liaisons follow their own course. With Anna, he seemed manic, almost desperate, and Anna herself rubbed you the wrong way, though to this day, you can't say exactly why. She was just wrong in a way that made your mouth pucker in a reflexive moue of distaste whenever you thought of her. The warmth in her voice never reached her eyes, which were cold and flat inside her face, and the caresses and entangled fingers in which John delighted struck you as predatory, a lioness setting its paw on the neck of its hapless, unsuspecting prey._

_You tried to ignore it for the sake of giddy, oblivious John, passed it off as a product of the cynical paranoia that comes with being a Fed who's seen far too much of the world's ugliness. And maybe there was a thread of unflattering jealousy, too. Not at the fact that she shared his bed; you'd never loved him as anything but your chosen brother, but at the fact that she was pulling him away from you. It had been you and John since you were kids, and while there had been brushes with love for both of you, none of them had ever come between you. You'd always made space for one another in each other's lives, created a language no one else could speak. In-jokes and movie nights and workouts on the federal track, where you bet beers and lunches on the outcome of footraces and challenged each other to run until you were drenched with sweat and wobbling like drunks on rubbery legs. Games of Name That Tune and movie quotes in the car or over the com when the bullpens were dead and there was no place you needed to be._

_But Anna did her damnedest to fill that space with her presence and push you out of his life. You saw him three times in the four months she was in his life, and she was with him, arm around his neck or threaded through his. She sat knee-to-knee and shoulder-to-shoulder with him, and sometimes she sat on his lap, cooing and possessive and constantly whispering in his ear. She never left his side, never gave you the chance to speak with him alone. Now and then, you managed to wrest a few minutes from her clutches, but she was there soon enough, hovering over his shoulder like a carrion crow and wheedling at him to come home, honey. And John, lovestruck and blind, always went._

_Maybe you should've said something, should've voiced your doubts, but John was over the moon, and you had no doubt that Anna would've twisted your concerns to her advantage and used your protests to deepen the divide between you. So you waited and hoped that his infatuation would burn hot and fast and fade in time and told yourself that when he came to his senses, you'd be there to dust him off and set him to rights._

_Then, eight weeks after she moved in and set her shampoo beside his in the shower, you rounded the corner into that godforsaken alley and found him facedown in the rubble, bleeding to death from the ragged hole where his left leg had been._

_No,_ she thinks. _I can't think about this. Not now._

She tries to drown the terrible recollection with a long swallow of beer, but it's no use. It rises to the surface, bones from an uneasy grave, and replays in her mind with hellish clarity.

_You didn't realize it was him at first. The air was choked with dust and smoke and the acrid tang of gunpowder, and your eyes blurred with tears as you blinked against smoke and grit. You stepped over a pile of shattered masonry and the feebly-twitching remnants of an MX with wires and circuit boards exposed to the overcast sky._

Humans back, _it slurred, and its lifeless eyes twitched._

_You saw his leg first, lying on the asphalt three feet from the rest of him. You started to dismiss it as part of another unfortunate MX, but then your eyes registered the ragged, charred flesh and the splinter of bone that jutted from the top, startlingly white against the charred fabric of the uniform pants._

Human, _you realized dreamily, and scanned its length. You paused at the frayed, smoldering edges of the thigh holster still strapped to it and the misshapen mass of plastic that had once been a service weapon and then let your gaze travel to the black combat boot on the foot._

_No recognition yet. Those boots were common issue among law enforcement, durable and easy to maintain. You had no reason to believe it was John's leg lying in a pool of blood and settling dust. John was strong and tough and agile, and he'd survived dozens of hairy situations with little more than a scratch and a well-fuck-me grin. Even when you shifted your focus to the body sprawled on the pavement with one slack hand reaching for a gun, it didn't register. He was covered in grit and blood, and his clothes were charred and grimy. Blood still pumped from his severed leg in feeble spurts._

_It wasn't until you rolled him over to check for vitals that you understood. You saw his slack, soot-smudged face, and ten years of discipline and training flew out the window. You dropped your AR-15 and hit your knees. Your heart was a white-hot mass inside your chest, and your lungs were clogged with sand, as though the dust and whirling grit had slipped down your throat and settled there. You couldn't breathe, and yet you heard yourself screaming._

John! Oh, my God, John! _you howled, and cradled him to you._

_There was no answer. His eyelids fluttered erratically, and you saw nothing but white beneath his eyelids. His eyes had rolled back in his head. He was breathing, but it was shallow and uneven, and his hands twitched spasmodically._

Oh, my God, John! No, no, no, dammit, you stay with me. _You rocked him for a moment, and then you remembered the severed limb behind you. You glanced down to see the blood pulsing from his stump._ No! No! You stay with me, goddammit. _You lowered him to the asphalt and scrabbled down to apply pleasure to the wound._

_The wound. As though it were a bullet hole or a gash and not a gaping absence of flesh. The heat of the incendiary round had partially cauterized the stump, which is why he's slumped on your couch right now and not so much ash sent to join his team by the flick of a cremationist's absent-minded wrist, but he was still bleeding to death, and the splintered stub of his femur peeked from the blackened meat of his thigh like an erupting tooth. Your John was in pieces._

I need a fucking tourniquet, _you screamed, and his blood seeped over your hands._ Hang on, John. You hang on.

_One of your team members liberated the shoelaces from the mangled mass of fabric and ruined flesh that had been Martin Pelham, and you tied them around the oozing remains of John's leg. When the tourniquet was secure, you slipped your arms beneath him and struggled to your feet. He was heavy, far too heavy for you, and your back gave a howl of protest. You ignored it._

I've got to get him to the medics.

Special Agent Peavy, we haven't finished our sweep for hostiles or survivors, _pointed out the bearer of purloined shoelaces._

I don't care.

Our orders-

Fuck the orders. He's going to die if I don't get him out of here right now. _And you couldn't, wouldn't let John die like this, mutilated and gasping his last in the dusty, squalid air of a warzone._

What about the rest of him, ma'am? _the kid asked, and glanced down at John's severed leg._

_You hesitated, torn. If you took it with you, a surgical team might be able to reattach it and return it to normal function, but John was heavy as lead in your straining arms, and more weight would only slow you down. If you stumbled or fell, you would never be able to regain your feet, and John would die without even the cold comfort of leaving the world with the rest of his team._

_You looked at the leg, still and slack as a doll's disarticulated limb._ I'm sorry, John. I'm so sorry, _you thought._ Leave it.

_You've wondered about that a lot in the years since, obsessed and second-guessed and wrestled with guilt and bitter regret. How much pain and frustration could you have spared him if you had made a different choice and told that kid to pile the leg on top of John like a leg of mutton? Maybe the doctors could've saved it, could've made him whole again. Physically, at least. And maybe if John had been steady on two human feet when he woke up to find an empty chair and a life full of holes, his mind would've steadied, too._

_But you didn't have the luxury of such reflection then. You were too preoccupied with the dead, lolling weight of him as you staggered toward the strobing, red lights of the ambulances lined up at the perimeter._

C'mon, John, c'mon, honey, _you pleaded as you lurched over chunks of smoking masonry and skirted the grasping arm of an MX whose chest had been blown open by a hollow-point 50-cal._

_John only wheezed, a shallow, dry rattle that made the hairs at your nape stand to attention._

Dammit, John, don't you dare! _You tried to shake him, jar his laboring lungs into compliance, but your body was rebelling against the furious mandate of your tenacious mind, and your arms burned with exertion, sprung and hot and failing._

No! No! _you gasped, and your lungs burned with terror and grief. You struggled a few more steps on faltering legs._ Help! Help me! I need a medic! Help! _You were beyond poise, beyond professional dignity. There was only John, your best friend and the man you had called brother since you were ten years old._

_Desperation granted your voice a power that your body lacked, and your cries drew the attention of a paramedic standing just beyond the holographic line that demarcated the perimeter. He turned, and his eyes widened in surprise. He motioned to his nearby partner, and they bounded through the yellow line, kits in gloved hands and slapping against their outer thighs._

Please, please help him. _It was almost a sob as a gloved hand pressed two fingers against the side of John's pallid, too-soft neck._

We got a live one, _the paramedic screamed, and beyond the virtual tape, fellow paramedics scrambled for kits and relayed the message into crackling radios. A second team of paramedics seized a gurney from the back of a waiting bus and hurtled it through the scrolling black-and-yellow line like a battering ram._

Ma'am, you need to give him to me, _said the first paramedic, and he tried to pull John from your arms, but now that the moment had come, you balked. You were sure that if you let John go, you'd never see him again save in the photo printed for his memorial service and projected on the wall of the funeral home and artfully framed by tasteful, velvet drapery. You'd never hear his voice on your com, inviting you for beer and a few games of pool at McQuaid's, never see his impish, cocksure grin at a joke well told or a game of poker won._

 _You shook your head and reflexively tightened your flagging grip._ N-n-

Ma'am, you need to give him to to me now, _the paramedic barked, and he and his cohort began to pry him from your grasp. A third joined in and grabbed John's remaining leg, and the battle was lost. You relinquished him with an anguished croak and reeled on your feet, fingers fisted in your hair. The paramedics had him on the stretcher and were barreling through the line before you regained either your breath or your feet, and before a third pair swarmed around him like avid blowflies, you caught a glimpse of them tearing off his vest and tossing it aside._

-et a line in...

-visible wound to his right shoulder and right leg severed just above the knee...

-espiration irregular and shallow, BP is 110 and falling.

-tachycardia.

_A frantic, insectile buzzing, and the gurney wheels screamed and clattered as its bearers sprinted toward a waiting ambulance. You tried to follow, to climb into the ambulance with John, but the rig was crowded and seething with bodies as they assessed his condition._

John! Officer Kennex, can you hear me? _shouted a medic, and he unrolled a length of I.V. tubing._

 _A paramedic placed a restraining hand on your shoulder._ No riders, _he said brusquely. Just before he clambered into the bus and slammed the door in your face, you saw another medic cutting off his pants._

_It was four hours before you got to the hospital. Next of kin or not, you were still team leader, and whether you liked it or not, you had a responsibility to the rest of your people. So you went back to it with tears on your face and blood and dust on your hands and in your hair, and by the time you got to the hospital, John was in surgery. In addition to the amputation and shrapnel injuries, the concussive force of the blast had given him multiple internal injuries, and surgeons were desperately trying to stop the bleeding._

_All you could do was wait, so you shuffled into the waiting room with a cup of gritty, burnt coffee and flopped into the nearest chair. Captain Maldonado was there, too, holding vigil over the families of the men she'd lost. She gave you an absent nod as you entered, and her normally-stern eyes were raw and lost as she moved among sobbing wives and weeping mothers and pale, pinched brothers with their hands curled into trembling fists._

_A hospital is of little use to the dead, and soon the families filtered out to begin the ugly scut work of grieving. Maldonado, though, she stayed for the hope that was John, the lone survivor and one of her best men. She sighed and shambled over to assume the chair beside you. Her hair sat atop her head in a frazzled, untidy bun that listed to one side, and her shoulders were hunched. She looked older than her forty-four years, and there were deep shadows under her red, puffy eyes._

He'll be all right, _she said in a thin, grating voice, and you weren't sure if it was a promise or a prayer._

_She was there when a surgeon staggered in seven hours later to deliver the news. Sometimes you still see the wilted rumple of his surgical mask as it dangled around his neck and the smears of blood on his scrubs. Complete amputation of the right leg and a deep laceration of the right shoulder, bruised lungs and a lacerated kidney. Fractured ribs. A severe concussion. With each pronouncement, your heart lurched inside your chest. Maldonado, who had risen along with you when the doctor entered, swayed on her feet._

What's his ultimate prognosis? _she asked in a remarkably steady voice._

There's nothing to be done for the leg, I'm afraid. The force of the blast created a torsion fracture that splintered the bone. If he survives the next few days, then we can consider synthetics.

And will he? Survive? _you demanded, and willed your spinning head to settle._

 _The doctor shrugged._ We stopped the bleeding, but the concussion could still cause swelling of the brain. He's strong and in excellent physical condition, so he has a better chance than most. We'll know more in the next forty-eight hours. _He sighed and squeezed your shoulder._

Can I see him? I want to see him, _you demanded._

 _He considered a moment._ I don't see the harm in looking in. He's still unconscious, so he won't respond. If we're lucky, he'll start coming out of it in the next twenty-four hours.

_You didn't cry until you saw him in that bed, whiter than the sheets he was lying on and so impossibly frail between the raised bedrails. I.V. lines snaked from both arms like the strings of a marionette, and a thicker tube disappeared under the sheets and between his thighs. A catheter, you realized numbly. The ebullient, grinning, vital man you'd just talked to the night before the raid was now pissing into a bag._

Oh, God, _you managed weakly, and clapped a gritty hand to your mouth. Your horrified gaze darted between the tape over his eyes and the horrible asymmetry of the sheet draped over his legs._ What's wrong with his leg? _you shouted, dazed and stupid as you stared at the swollen and queerly-elongated hump that had once been his right leg._

We've inserted air bladders beneath the skin to stretch it, _he explained._ Otherwise, there won't be enough to create a smooth stump. It's in preparation for the cap we'll place in anticipation of a synthetic limb.

 _You started to enter the room, but the doctor stopped you._ I'm sorry, _he said, and nodded at your hands._

_You realized then that you still had John's blood on your hands, mingled with a fine layer of dust and crusted beneath the thin, slivered crescents of your nails. For a moment, you could only blink at them in logy stupefaction, and then your composure buckled along with your knees and you sat down hard upon the linoleum and sobbed._

_The doctor hovered over you, shuffling from foot to foot with the muted scuffing of crepe soles._ I know it's a lot to take in, but we're going to give him every chance for the fullest recovery possible, _he assured you from somewhere above your head._ Is there anyone else we should call? Family? A spouse?

 _You shook your head. Snot glistened on your upper lip, and you tasted salt on your tongue._ I'm the only family he's got. He's got a girlfriend, Anna Moore, but I don't-I don't have her number. _You sniffled and swiped at your eyes with the heel of your hand._

I'll make sure that someone gets in touch with her, _he promised._ In the meantime, there's not much you can do here. Why don't you go home, try to get some sleep? Someone will call you if his condition changes.

_Sound advice, but you didn't follow it. All the strength had run from your legs, and you could only sit on the floor outside his room. It was probably against hospital protocol and the fire code to have someone sitting on the floor, but it was quiet on the ward at that time of night, and the veteran nurses were long trained in the art of looking the other way. So there you sat, peering through the glass wall of his room at the various beeping, trilling monitors until your head was heavy as wet sand atop your neck. You couldn't leave him. You couldn't. You were afraid that if you left, you'd get home to the message that he'd died while you were on the freeway. So you mainlined coffee and ignored your bladder until it screamed and waited for him to wake up._

_But he didn't wake up. Not that day, and not the next, and as days spun into weeks, the doctors scratched their heads and tutted over his charts. A deep coma, they said, and they hypothesized at length about its cause. The surgeon who had saved his life attributed it to the concussive head trauma he'd experienced when an incendiary round had detonated less than two feet from the back of his head and sheared off his leg, while an attending physician had blamed it on severe blood loss. Whatever the reason, John's brain had simply gone dark, and nothing they tried--shouting, painful stimuli, corticostimulants--could turn it on again. When rousing him failed, they started him on a regimen of medications to preserve existing brain function and prevent neural erosion, and then they left him to his unending sleep._

_You would have stayed with him around the clock if you could, but your life had to go on even if his had stopped, and so you returned to work. Guilt churned in your gut like lye while you sat at your desk and filed reports and went on busts as if nothing had changed, but in truth, it was a relief to bury yourself in the familiarity of the job. Work you could do, work you understood, and if you sometimes saw his slack, pasty face in the precinct house as you washed your hands, well, it was easily banished by thoughts of an impending bust on a suspected drug lab or an interrogation in progress down the hall. Work was a comfort, a respite from John's yawning, implacable absence._

_You visited him as often as you could. Like you'd told the doctor, you were the only family he had left. You went after shifts and on your days off, sat beside his bed and told him about your day or the latest jackoff sleazebag with which you'd had to play Let's Make a Deal in order to catch a bigger fish. Sometimes you read to him from one of the unfinished books you'd found on his com or turned on the TV and watched Sportscenter with him while the monitors chirped and beeped and his chest rose and fell. No matter what you did, you held his limp, cool hand in yours and willed warmth and hope into his pale flesh._

_Sometimes a nurse was there when you came, injecting nutrient paste into his nasogastric feeding tube or massaging and stretching his limbs to stave off muscle atrophy or rolling him to prevent bedsores and positional clots. You always left the room when that happened. John was a proud man, and you knew he'd never want you to see him so helpless and exposed, ass bared to public scrutiny while a stranger washed his balls with a wet wipe._

_But you always came back, and you had your ways of doing for him and offering him what love you could. You trimmed his nails and shaved his face and did your best to keep his hair in some semblance of order. You rubbed his face with moisturizer and wiped the flaky, white spittle from the corner of his mouth. Now and then, you peeled the tape from his eyes and put eyedrops in his eyes. You did it for his comfort, yes, but also because you wanted to see them again, lively and full of mischief. But when you peeled back his eyelid, dropper poised above his eye, what you saw was as dull and lifeless as the vacant gaze of a taxidermist's prize. You cried then, hard and long, head on his chest and bottle of eyedrops forgotten on the bed._

_Once, after the attending nurse had left the room, you lifted him from the pillows and pulled him into a hug._

Please, John, you need to wake up, _you whispered, and closed your eyes at the boneless loll of him._ John, dammit. C'mon, I don't want to do this without you. _You wept at the feathery lightness of him in your arms, such a marked contrast to his heaviness as you lugged him over the rubble on faltering legs._

He's wasting away, _you thought as you cupped the back of his skull in your palm and tried to ignore the dusty, yellow stink of a body washed only with disposable rags and alcohol._

John, you get your ass back here, _you commanded, and your eyes burned._

_But John was far away, and he only sagged in your arms and breathed in that shallow rasp that had grown so familiar, and so you lowered him to the pillow and pressed a kiss to his dry forehead and went outside to take laps around the building._

_You weren't there when he woke up, and you'll never forgive yourself for that. No one should have to walk up to an empty chair and a throng of strangers poking and prodding and shining penlights into their stunned eyes. It was nearly an hour before anyone from the hospital bothered to call and another ninety before you could extract yourself from a briefing on an impending bust. Your foot was on the floor the whole way there, and you left rubber on the parking garage._

John's awake, _you thought wildly as you made a beeline for the elevator to the ICU that was by now as familiar as your home._ He's awake. _You curled your hands into fists to stay their trembling and willed your pounding heart to slow._

_His eyes were closed when you got there, and for one horrible, swooning instant, you thought it was a joke, thought that a bored orderly had played a cruel prank, but then you stroked the top of his hand, and those lovely eyes fluttered open, glassy but aware._

Sam, _he croaked, and the relief in it made you want to weep._

I'm here, sweetie, _you replied, and leaned down to enfold him._

 _An arm rose to return the favor, light as birdbone, and warm breath tickled your neck in plosive gusts._ Sam. _He clung to you with what strength he had, and when he was spent and slumped against the pillows, you brushed your fingers through his hair and offered him a sip of water. He was weak as an infant then, and you had to support his head as he suckled at the straw with muddled determination._

_It soon became clear that the John who left wasn't the one who came back. His physical recovery was rapid and astounding, spurred by his determination and the aid of medications to accelerate muscular and neurological development, but his eyes were dark and haunted, shuttered. He seldom smiled and never laughed, and he refused to let you see his rehab sessions or uncover his legs in your presence. More often than not, you sat in strained silence and pretended to watch TV, and John stared at nothing and chewed on his unspoken anger like gristle._

_He retreated fully once he got out of the hospital. You'd planned to bunk him down at your place for a while, but the hospital released him while you were at work, and he promptly holed up in his apartment, surrounded by memories of the life he thought he'd had with Anna. He stopped answering his com and ignored your messages and texts. His life shrank, became nothing but a series of therapy sessions and evals and rehab appointments, and you were invited to none of them. You begged and pleaded, cajoled and outright threatened, and more than once, you went to his apartment and pounded on the door, but he never answered. He just cocooned within the walls and within himself and mourned a life that never truly was._

_It was Rhea who coaxed him out. She understood him in a way you couldn't, recognized the frustration of being alone and trapped in a body that didn't work as it should, and she gave him a place to go when the walls of his apartment closed in and soured memories drove him out. He could be angry there, and afraid, and know that there would be no one to catalogue his confusion and weakness and judge him for it. He wasn't lesser in her eyes for the absence of a leg because she had never known him any other way. To her, he was just John, the one-legged neighbor across the hall. She knew nothing of his past and could therefore not blame him for it. He could be who his long sleep had made him, and he flourished under her patient care._

_You first heard her name four months after he left the hospital. He turned up at your door with a six-pack of beer and sandwiches from Riegel's in a paper bag._

Hey, Sam, _he said, one shoulder propped on the doorframe._ I, uh, brought sandwiches if you want 'em. _He held up the bag and waggled it._

To what do I owe the honor? _you muttered peevishly._

 _He had the grace to look abashed._ I know I haven't been around much. It's, uh, been a rough couple of months.

More like a rough couple of years, _you thought bleakly, and stepped aside to let him in._

 _He dipped his head in acknowledgment and ambled past you to veer into the kitchen._ Want a beer?

There's cold ones in the fridge. _You closed the door and followed him into the kitchen, where you found him with his face buried in your Kenmore. As you watched, he swapped his six-pack for a pair of cold bottles, and then he straightened and checked the door with his hip. He moved with a fluidity and assurance you hadn't seen in months._

Guess the leg finally took.

_He hummed around the mouth of his beer bottle, brows knitted in confusion._

You look like you finally got the hang of it.

 _A dismissive shrug._ I guess the rehab's good for something.

I guess, _you agreed, but it was more than the logical outcome of bridges and leg lifts and scissor lifts. The last time you'd seen him, his shoulders had been perpetually hunched to protect against an unseen blow, and the prosthesis had issued its strident warning with obnoxious regularity as he'd lurched and hobbled around his hospital room and sworn under his breath. Now he moved with ease, and when he plopped the bag of sandwiches onto the table and sat down, you could almost believe that the past two years had never happened, that he was whole and unblemished beneath his jeans._

What? _he demanded suspiciously, and set a beer before you._

 _You ran your fingers through your hair._ I just don't get it. You don't talk to me for three months, and now you swan in here like you were never gone.

 _He twisted the cap off his beer and took a long swallow, and then he studied the table._ I had some things to work out.

Like what? _you prodded._ Rehab? Therapy? Another eval? _You eyed him over your beer._ You expect me to believe that those things took up so much of your time that you couldn't drop me a call or an email once in a while?

It's not that simple, _he said._

Oh? Enlighten me.

 _His eyes flashed._ I'm short a fucking leg, Sam, _he snapped_ Not to mention a girlfriend and about seventeen months of my goddamn life. He slammed his beer bottle on the table hard enough to slosh the contents. So excuse me if I took a little time to figure shit out. _He took a desultory pull of beer and reached for the bag of sandwiches._

Did it ever occur to you that I might be able to help? _you retorted, stung._

Oh yeah? How? What, you gonna watch me hobble around my apartment like Tiny Tim? No, thanks. I've lost everything else; why don't you let me keep my dignity?

_You opened your mouth to remind him that you'd seen all that and more, then closed it with a snap._

_He snorted as though to say that was the answer he'd expected and unwrapped his sandwich._ You gonna tell me you found Anna under your couch?

Dammit, John, that's not fair!

 _He sighed and put down his untouched sandwich, and then he scrubbed his face with his hands._ You're right. I'm sorry. I'm just-I needed some time, okay? _He picked up his sandwich._ Besides, _he said, and took a prodigious bite that did your heart good,_ it's not like I've been alone.

 _You paused in the act of reaching for your own sandwich._ What do you mean?

 _A nonchalant, one-shouldered shrug._ Been spending time with my neighbor across the hall. We've done lunch a few times.

Ooh, so is this a thing?

 _He huffed in amusement._ No, it's not a thing. It's just...Rhea knows.

_You tried to pump him for more information, but he just shook his head and took another bite of sandwich and turned the subject to the job and your latest case. You knew damn well what he was doing, but you were so happy to have him talking that you let it ride. You ate your sandwich and split that six-pack and watched an old movie on TCM, and when he left, he gave you a soft smile and a hug that you felt in your bones._

_For all his talk that it wasn't a thing, Rhea's name cropped up with intriguing regularity. Rhea this and Rhea that, and_ Rhea told me about this new gadget to cover my stump cap in case I want to take up swimming. _She was his faithful shadow, always there when he needed her, talking him through panic attacks and doing her best to lead him out of the shadows. He was with her as often as he was with you--maybe more, truth be told--eating takeout and watching movies, and through it all, he insisted she was merely a friend, a sister he'd found in the grinding, grueling foxhole of life with a disability._

_And maybe it was true for a while. Anna had burned him badly, shattered his heart and broken his trust, and it was easier for him to focus on his work, to blow nettlesome MXes to bits with his service revolver and bicker with Dorian and tell himself that was all he needed. He flirted with Stahl just to see if he could and went on dates with expendable strangers just to hear another voice, and then he went home to his bachelor's bed and stared at the walls until the booze kicked in or his demons came to call and drove him to Rhea's door. It was boring and lonely, but it was also safe, and better than being alone with his soured memories of a woman who had never truly loved him._

_Then Simon came along with his bomb collar and his twisted thirst for immortality and reminded John of the fragility of life. That he had been granted a miraculous second chance would not forever spare him from the reaper's cutting scythe. It reminded you, too, and you tried your best to nudge him further into the land of the living._

John, you need to get back out there, _you cajoled one afternoon as you ran the track at the Bureau's fitness complex. Your legs thrummed with a pleasant burn, and sweat beaded in your hairline._

 _He shook his head._ Now's not the right time, _he said, and turned his head to spit._

Yeah? When's it going to be?

 _He shrugged and blinked sweat from his eyes._ When things settle down.

 _You laughed._ C'mon, John. You know things never settle down in this line of work. There's just a lull until the next shitshow.

Ain't that the truth? _he grunted, and his feet pounded on the rubber of the track._

Exactly. So what are you waiting for? 

I'm just not ready. _He wouldn't meet your gaze._

 _You stopped and placed your hand on his arm._ Not everyone out there is Anna, _you reminded him gently._ There are good people out there. You see them every day. Hell, you've saved more than a few, like that girl a while back, the one trapped in the building with her sister.

Jenna, _he supplied, and jogged in place to maintain his heartrate._

 _You jabbed a finger at him in triumphant acknowledgment._ There are more like her than there are like Anna. Look at Rhea.

 _His gaze sharpened, and his rhythm faltered._ I can't, _he said brusquely, but for the briefest instant, you thought you saw wistful melancholy in his eyes._

John- 

Besides, who's got the time with a job like ours? _he said, and clapped you on the shoulder. Then he turned and trotted around the curve before you could pursue the subject._

 _He couldn't, but he did. Three weeks after he destroyed a homicidal XRN and solved his father's murder and cleared his name, he met you at_ Le Manche _a favorite cafe, grinning like a fool and bouncing his knees beneath the table. You attributed his nervous energy to his recent victory, but then you slipped into the seat opposite and got a closer look at him. His eyes were alight with a happiness you feared you'd never see again, and when he saw you gaping at him in mystified astonishment, he actually laughed, bright and clear in the mid-afternoon quiet._

What's gotten into you? _you demanded, and considered the possibility that he'd started a new medication._

 _His grin had only widened, boyish and dazzling._ Nothing, _he answered innocently, and ducked his head behind his folded hands to hide his glee._

My ass. Are you high? _You peered into his eyes in search of blown pupils._

 _Damned if he didn't giggle._ No. _He reached out to fiddle with the corner of his napkin._ It's- _He shifted in his seat and drummed an erratic tattoo on the edge of the table._ I've met someone.

 _Your heart soared._ Oh, John. That's fantastic. Who is she? _An image arose in your mind of Valerie Stahl, the Chrome detective with whom he'd awkwardly flirted since his return to the job._

 _His exuberant smile softened._ Rhea, _he said quietly, and took a sip of water._

 _You blinked in surprise._ Your neighbor? I thought you said you couldn't.

 _He gave a loose, one-shouldered shrug._ I did. I didn't mean for anything to happen, but I took dinner over there last night, and things happened.

What things? _you prodded._

She said she loved me, _he said, and his eyes grew distant as he savored the memory._ It doesn't take a rocket scientist to guess what happened after that.

_No, it didn't. And while part of you was glad that he had found release and a respite from the loneliness that had dogged him since Anna had left him with nothing but scars and the grit of ash on his tongue, you couldn't help but worry._

You what? Are you sure you're not moving a little fast?

You mean like I did with Anna? _he said shrewdly, and signaled the waiter for a proper drink._ Rhea is nothing like Anna, _he murmured, and the unstinting surety in it made your chest ache._ Besides, it's not like we haven't known each other for a while; it's been almost a year.

Still, declaring your love and sleeping together five minutes later... _You stopped. John was happy, truly happy for the first time in years, and the last thing you wanted to do was tear that from him. So you changed tack._ Do you love her?

 _His reply was quiet but firm._ I've never felt like this about anyone. Not even Anna. _He looked you in the eye._ I think this might be something special, Sam. Really special. _And in it you heard an unspoken plea._ Let me have this. Be happy for me.

 _So you slid your hand across the table and patted his._ Then I can't wait to meet her, _you told him, and his answering smile was a treasure you tucked close to your heart._

_Meet her you did, and the moment you saw them together, the cold fist of apprehension that had curled around your heart released its grip. You knew love when you saw it, deep and abiding and unrepentant, and it surrounded them in a protective cocoon. Rhea was everything Anna was not, reserved and thoughtful and infinitely patient, and though she clung to John as eagerly as Anna had, there was nothing of greedy, smothering possessiveness in it. Her touches were gentle, designed to give more comfort than they took, and she was quick to let him go if he wanted a moment to himself or to chat with you. She encouraged him to join you for a few games of pool or a few rounds at the bar, and she never hovered on the periphery of your closed circle or tried to insinuate herself into conversations never meant for her tongue._

_And John?_

_You'd seen him infatuated a time or two, infatuated with some teenage queen or mooning over a fellow recruit at the academy, but you'd never seen him like this. Your brash, swaggering brother tended to her with unwavering tenderness. A voice constantly raised in anger or rough exuberance suddenly knew sweetness and lowered itself to whisper secrets and endearments into her ear, and hands that had bruised and broken and left their brutal imprint on opposing players and fleeing, insouciant perps alike learned gentleness and temperance. He rushed to open door and scurried to move chairs, and when they walked together, he matched his stride to the snap of her wrists. He was constantly reaching for her, glutting himself on the endless store of touch she offered, tangling his fingers with hers as they sat at a table in a cozy restaurant and absently brushing them through her hair as he chatted with you at McQuaid's. Sometimes when he thought your attention diverted, he pressed a lingering kiss to her temple or rested his forehead against hers, eyes closed and long, brown lashes fluttering delicately._

Repose, _you thought as you watched them from the corner of your eye._ This is what repose looks like. Trust and love and I've come home, and all of it said without a word.

 _So it was that you were utterly unsurprised when he looked at you the day after New Year's and said,_ She said yes. My Rhea's going to marry me.

_My Rhea. Mine. My love. It was the language of John's love, unquestioning and inviolate, and you were proud to stand as his best woman that late-September afternoon when he recited his vows in a reverent whisper and slid a thin, golden band onto her finger and sealed its placement with a kiss._

_So you knew precisely what it meant when his steady hands trembled as he raised her veil and smoothed the fragile, diaphanous lace over her back with persnickety care. He was keenly aware of the incalculable gift he'd been given, and you've never seen him happier or more alive than he was at the reception. Laughter bubbled from his lips in an endless stream, and he darted to and fro in the small banquet room, sharing jokes and glasses of wine. He swept you off your feet and into a giddy spin, and then he kissed your cheek and scuttled off to chatter with Captain Maldonado, who watched him with quiet, maternal joy. She had always believed in John, had hoped for him as he lay in that claustrophobic bed, and to see him in full flight was a validation of her faith._

_You'll never forget that first dance. You filmed it in the hopes of giving it to him on their first anniversary, and what you saw was the last thing you expected. You assumed that they would simply sway in place for a few moments, hands linked. Perhaps he would lift her from her chair and hold her in his arms, bid her rest her head on his shoulder and let the music wash over her. Short and sweet and careful not to overtax muscles unaccustomed to standing without the aid of crutches._

_But what you got was a glimpse into their secret language, a celebration of their devotion wrought with every line of their bodies. John took her hand, yes, and bent to kiss the golden band he had bestowed upon her finger, but he didn't break into an awkward sidle. Instead, he drew her to him and stepped back, and when she followed, he released her hand and spun to the side of her chair. His hand stroked her hair for the briefest instant, and then she turned into him and entangled their fingers. One and two and three and four, and Rhea snapped her chair from side to side to match his steps. He pulled her into an elegant spin and released her hand, and she streaked away from him until she stayed her right wheel with the heel of her hand and turned into a slow, belling curve, a bird in flight. He stepped to meet her, knees bent and arms outstretched, and when she rolled into them, he grinned and executed a crisp spin that sent her across the floor. One, two, three spins, and then Rhea stopped, her wheel parallel to his hip, and extended her arm, as elegant as a ballerina in an arabesque. She was poised and beautiful and waiting, and John's eyes were wet as he stepped into her outstretched arm and spun with her, fearless and blind to everything but her._

_It was love embodied, and you could only watch in awe as they wove in and around one another. Each step was an act of faith, and Rhea never faltered as she entrusted herself to John's strength. She never hesitated, never shied from his guiding touch, and John never failed her, never missed a catch or let her spin too hard or too far. It was a dance in perfect balance, embedded deep in muscle and soul, each step fashioned from a memory they had made together. It was an_ I love you _only they could say, and when the music faded and Rhea glided in to rest her head on his stomach, you were dimly aware of tears on your face. You saw the same awe reflected on other faces, and the whoop you released was almost a sob._

What was that? _you demanded when it was your turn to dance._

What was what? _he asked innocently._

Don't be a wiseass. _You swatted him on the arm._

_John only smiled and shook his head, and his gaze drifted to where Rhea sat sipping a glass of champagne with Rudy, who rocked and bobbed with nervous energy._

_Near the end of the night, when the few guests were loose-limbed and loose-lipped and picking lazily at the remains of the wedding cake and the hors d'oevres, you spotted John tucked into a discreet corner with his blushing bride on his lap. His embrace was gentle, but his kisses were decidedly less chaste than the one he'd bestowed upon her at the altar, and long fingers rested against the pale nape in a possessive splay, the gold of his wedding band glinting in the candlelight that flickered from the nearby table._

This goes on much longer, he's liable to make himself a husband right here on this floor, _you thought as his unadorned hand slid up her leg and disappeared beneath her gown, and you polished off your wine with a final gulp and began to steer the guests toward the door._

_John and Rhea managed to disentangle themselves long enough to behave like proper hosts, but need radiated from them like fever. It was a need that never truly abated for them, two touch-starved souls who had found one another, and it came as a shock to no one but John when he pulled you aside one January night at McQuaid's to tell you that his Rhea was pregnant._

She's having my baby, Sam, _he announced giddily, and laughed as he swiped at his eyes._

Well, what are you crying for? _you asked as you shook him by the shoulder, but you knew. John had thought his dream of a family lost with his leg. He was too old and too broken, a cripple with ten good years left before the force turned him out to pasture with a gold watch and a kick in the ass and a gutted pension that would likely barely cover his medical expenses. No one in their right mind would want to stake a family on such uncertain prospects._

_But Rhea had, just as she had chosen to bind her life to his, and now the sweetest of his dreams was within his reach._

John, you're going to be fine. You're going to be a fantastic father. How could you not be? Look at the role model you had.

_And he was a fantastic father. Right up until the job came calling and blew his world apart all over again._

An image arises in her mind of John with his nose buried in his tablet, devouring every available resource on high-risk and special-needs pregnancies. He'd been so determined to protect Rhea and the child she carried, to give them every chance at success. He'd faithfully attended every doctor's appointment and bought her array of prenatal vitamins, and he had not only contacted the recommended specialist, but others as well, and Dorian had often groused that John insisted he carry Rhea at every opportunity, much to her disgruntlement. She shudders to think what all these independent consults must've cost him, but John hadn't cared. His only concern had been Rhea, that she be safe and loved and comfortable.

Now he's in tatters on her couch, grasping at the ruin of his happily-ever-after with trembling hands.

"John, what happened?" she asks a third time, and quashes the impulse to cross the room and still his hands.

A watery, shuddering breath. "I hurt her. I hurt my Rhea." He presses the heels of his hands into his eyes and begins to rock to and fro.

 _Oh, that much I know,_ says a bleak voice inside her head, and she sees Rhea huddled in the shower in her nightdress, arms wrapped around her swollen abdomen and nose pressed to the wall of the shower as though to draw John's scent from the tile.

"Start at the beginning," she coaxes, as though he were a rabbity witness.

"I hurt her. I hurt her," he repeats, and the tremors have spread to his arms and head. "I didn't want to. You know I didn't want to." He looks up, and his eyes are pleading. "I had to keep her safe."

"I know," she soothes, and she does. John would tear his own heart out before he would hurt Rhea, would sacrifice his sanity to keep her safe.

 _And it looks like he did,_ she muses as he rocks and rocks.

"But she didn't. She thought-" A moan escapes him, and he rubs his palms on jittering knees. "Jesus Christ." He utters a mirthless laugh. "At first, she thought I was a bot, some crazed, grief-stricken idea of atonement from Rudy and Maldonado. I tried to hold her, but she kept hitting me. Then she accidentally bloodied my nose, and when she saw the blood-"

"I thought it would be all right then, that now that she realized I was me, I could explain, but-" He shakes his head. "She just- I've never heard her cry like that, Sam, like all her skin was being torn off." He heaves a shuddering breath and scrubs his hands through his hair, and her heart throbs in sympathy because she knows what he means. She'd heard those gut-wrenching cries for herself in the endless, delirious days after John's "death", when she and Rhea had stumbled through the endless hours like a pair of tottering drunks, staring at nothing and muddling through the merciless bureaucracy of death and bursting into tears at random intervals.

 _It was the sound of a heart torn in two by a ruthless hand,_ she thinks. _High and shrill and lost, and beneath the terror and grief was loneliness and a fury so cold it burned. Scared the shit out of me the first time I heard it. I tore ass into the bedroom, convinced she was having a goddamn miscarriage and watching the last of John slip down her thighs, but when I flung open the door, she was lying on the bed with her face buried in his pillow._

I can't smell him anymore, _she wailed, and clutched the pillow until it bulged through her fingers like fat._ He's gone, Sam. My John is gone. _And then she sobbed until she made herself sick._

"I tried, but she just _screamed_ at me not to touch her," he says, and she winces. Rhea is one of the most tactile people she's ever known, and she's never denied John the comfort of touch, never refused his affection. 

"I'm sure it's just shock talking," she says. "This last week hasn't been easy, John," and oh, isn't that an understatement. "Think about it. She sends you off to work one morning, and three hours later, there's Maldonado in her office with a casualty squad, telling her you took two in the head in the line of duty. She gets to spend the next two days heaving her guts in the morning and talking to funeral directors in the afternoon. All while pregnant, mind you." She holds up a hand to forestall his protest. "After that, she gets up in front of most of the damn precinct and bares her broken heart for the world to see. And hey, if that weren't enough, she gets to spend the next four days sleeping in the bed she shared with you and trying to figure out how she's going to find the strength to go on and be someone's mother when it takes everything she's got just to keep breathing. And to top it off, she can't even numb the pain with a sedative or a goddamn drink."

"Then, after all that, she finds out that, oh, hey, her husband isn't really dead after all, whoops, so fucking sorry. He was just on an op for the SFPD. We're sorry for the inconvenience, but at least you got some sweet casseroles and a flag out of the deal."

"Dammit, Sam!" he roars. "I told you, I was protecting her! If I didn't take that op, they would've hunted her down and tortured her and killed her to get to me. She would've suffered because of me. My child would've died because of me. I couldn't let that happen."

"I know that, and you know that," she retorts, unfazed by his outburst. "And I suspect that somewhere deep down, she knows that. But right now, John, she doesn't give a flying fuck about logic or what was best. All she knows is that the man she loves more than anything in the world looked her in the eye and kissed her lips and lied to her. He let her think she was dead and watched her suffer for eight days and didn't do a damn thing about it."

"You don't think I wanted to? There's not a minute that went by that I didn't want to be with her, to take it all back. Christ, watching her give my eulogy was the hardest thing I've ever had to do."

"You watched the eulogy?" she says flatly.

He nods. "Closed-circuit cameras positioned around the gravesite. The Feds thought InSyndicate might show up to make sure it was legit."

"Christ, John."

"You don't think I know I'm a bastard?" The tears that've been threatening since he slouched on her doorstep finally begin to fall. "I heard Rhea crying, begging Dorian not to let them take the casket, and I tried to leave. But the Feds insisted. Said I couldn't quit now. So I had to sit in their deluxe accommodations for four days with that in my head."

He sits back and lets his head loll against the lumpy cushions of her couch, and tears stream down his cheeks in lazy rivulets. "She was so proud the day she married me," he croaks. "Like she thought I hung the moon." A sardonic huff. "Now she thinks I'm a fucking sadistic monster."

"Give her time, John. It's only been a few hours."

He turns his head to study the blank face of her TV. "Rhea hums when she's happy, this distant little chirp in the back of her throat." He waggles his fingers below his Adam's apple. "Think less songbird and more air in the pipes, but it's a good sound. Home. She was making it a lot. Making it the morning I left. Happy. Safe." He closes his eyes, and his throat spasms. "Loved."

"John-"

He turns his gaze on her, and all she sees is despair. "'M I ever going to hear that sound again, Sam?"

She gets up and crosses to sit beside him on the couch. "Give it time, John. Let her calm down. Right now, she's a walking wound. Let me make you something to eat." She reaches up to brush his temple, but he shies from her touch.

 _It's not your touch he wants,_ whispers the voice of dismal realization inside her head. _Not your absolution he needs._

She drops her hand to his shoulder and squeezes. That he accepts, and his hand rises to pat hers. Then he reaches for his scotch and takes a sip. 

"You remember what I told you at my bachelor party? About not deserving Rhea?"

"Yes, and it was bullshit."

He snorts. "Yeah. Not so much. I have her for six months, and look at what I did to her. No. You know who I deserved? Anna. And I got everything that was coming to me. It's just too bad everyone else got caught in the crossfire."

"Stop it," she demands, stricken.

John only grimaces and throws back his scotch with a toss of his head, and when the tumbler has been drained of the last drop, he sets it on her coffee table with persnickety care.

"John."

But he only curls in on himself and rests his head on his forearm where it lies across the arm of the couch.

 _I can't fix this,_ she realizes. _There's only one person who can, and I'm not sure she will, not right now._

 _She made him a vow,_ counters the sister voice inside her head. _It's time to see if she'll hold to them._

_So did he. And for the first time in their long and beautiful dance, he missed._

She thinks of that dance, its joy and improbably grace as they spun and spun across the floor. They had been lost in each other, had loved each other fearlessly and deeply and without apology, and she refuses to believe a devotion so fierce can be so easily broken. 

_C'mon, Rhea,_ she thinks as she pats John on the shoulder again and rises from the couch. _According to John, you're the most patient person on the face of the earth. I'm asking for just a little bit more._

"I'm going to make you a sandwich," she says.

"Don't bother," he mumbles from the crook of his arm.

She goes into the kitchen, but it's not the bread she reaches for. Instead, she picks up the phone, takes a deep breath, and sends up a prayer.


End file.
